Blackjack Wayward (The Blackjack Series) (44 page)

“You say that like its cool. Like, ‘good, glad she quit.’ Well, you don’t understand what she meant to people, what she meant to us,” he paused, drinking wine to avoid getting emotional, something that Rebecca saw and understood, squeezing his hand.

“Well, you’re making it sound like I made her quit, like I put a gun to her head, and that wasn’t the case. Did she tell you the story? The full story?”

I found myself getting angry again, and just then I inadvertently squeezed the wine glass too hard and it exploded in my hand.

“Goddammit!” I said.

Rebecca stood, wiping my arm with her napkin as Alain came in again. His boys picked up the salad, mine mostly intact, and replaced our dishes with the risotto.

“We had an accident?” he wondered aloud.

“I’ve got it Alain, no worries,” Rebecca said, finishing with me.

“No problem, then? Not to worry, I bring you another glass.”

And he disappeared.

“It’s okay,” I told her as she folded the stained napkin.

“I know what she means to you, Blackjack,” Jeff said, trying to strike a reconciliatory tone.

“No you don’t,” I said. “You have no idea.”

I paused, looking at Superdynamic’s girlfriend standing right in front of him, and after seeing the love they shared, I felt the emotion begin to well. Seeing the memories of my childhood flashing past, mixing with those of my failed adulthood wasn’t a pretty sight. My life was a waking nightmare more akin to a train wreck, where somehow I had managed to stay alive, just barely.

“I’ve never had anything...to care for. Anyone to....”

I looked down, too ashamed to continue, to face these people who were her dearest friends.

“Apogee is the only thing...the only thing that’s ever been honest, in my life. The only person that I’ve ever connected with, that I’ve ever...see, I don’t have many friends,” I chuckled. “But then you’d know that.”

Rebecca smiled, happy I was ‘sharing,’ opening up about myself. In her heart of hearts, I could see she hoped this meeting to end with Jeff and me as newfound friends. But I knew better; his contemptuous glare told me everything I needed to know.

“And don’t think I don’t know what I am,” I went on, not caring what he thought of me any more. “I know what everyone thinks of me. I know. But...oh, God how do I say this?”

She took my hand, turning me to face them.

“You just say it,” she said.

I nodded, wiping away a tear.

“I know I’m a...a monster. I know I don’t belong....” I waved my hand outward, motioning to everything. “I know what a piece of shit I am. You don’t have to remind me.”

She handed me a napkin to wipe my tears, but I was content with letting them fall.

“But Apogee changed everything. She was the first person who ever saw something in me that wasn’t all bad, that wasn’t all rotten.”

Tears traced down Rebecca’s cheeks as she looked up at me.

“And that made me feel good.”

I lost it, and she hugged me. As we cried together, Superdynamic stood but stayed across the table.

“Dale, there’s good in everyone,” she said.

“I didn’t even know how hopeless I was until I met her.”

She separated from me and handed me the wine glass, which I drained.

“She saved me, Jeff. She saved me.”

“I know,” he said.

“And now I’m going to save her back.”

He shook his head, “I gotta be honest, I plain don’t know what to do here. Things are more complicated now. Lord Mighty is unstoppable. Even if we had Epic–”

“Throw me at him,” I said, moving around the table to him, almost wanting to fall to my knees and beg. “I’ll hold him off long enough for you guys to get to the White House and make sure she’s fine.”

“It’s the President we’re after,” he complained.

“Whatever, just find the President and Apogee and evacuate them both. I’ll be the punching bag.”

“Mighty will crush you in one second,” he said.

“One second more you’ll have.”

“No,” Rebecca said. “I don’t like this.”

“Its fine,” I said, holding her arm. “I don’t care.”

Superdynamic was giving the thing some consideration. I could see him running through all the calculations, gauging my strength and toughness based on the Hashima fight with Epic, and all that followed, measured against the man-god that was Lord Mighty.

“I don’t like it,” he said. “We fight as a team.”

“Okay, so what’s your plan when Lord Mighty comes at you guys? Moe? Come on.”

“You don’t understand, Blackjack. This isn’t some duel at fifty paces. The guy will kill you.”

I nodded. “Don’t pretend like you care.”

“No,” Rebecca protested. “Please don’t say that.”

She looked over at Superdynamic, but he seemed to be giving the proposal serious thought. Then she turned those beautiful blue/gray eyes to me.

“We don’t feel that way, Dale. Right, Jeff? We don’t see you that way.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, but she ran right over me.

“Of course it matters,” she said.

I smiled, not wanting to get into a semantic discussion comparing my good qualities versus all the evil shit I had done and evil shit I had yet to pay for. In fact, getting pummeled to oblivion by Lord Mighty would solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.

“Jeffrey! You can’t possibly be entertaining the idea.”

“He has to,” I said. “It’s go time, Rebecca. We eat this meal and then you have to go. Am I right?” I motioned to Superdynamic, who nodded.

“Moe made contact with the forces trying to enter D.C. about fifteen minutes ago,” he said and Rebecca audibly gasped, covering her mouth.

“The plan is to fly to a rally point in the Cicada and get choppered in at low altitude to the outskirts of D.C. Then we slug our way to the White House.”

“Right,” I said, continuing his train of thought. “And someone has to keep the big guy busy.” I turned to Rebecca, who unlike her boyfriend was still not warming up to the idea. “Zundergrub has a ton of villains with him, but none of them matter. Not when compared to Mighty. He’s worth the lot.”

Her bottom lip quivered as she looked from me to her man, starting to realize I wasn’t the only one that was going to be in danger.

“You think you can hold him off?” Superdynamic asked, starting to buy into the crazy plan.

I looked over at Rebecca and back to him, “I can do it.”

“Okay,” Superdynamic said, nodding severely. “Then you’re part of the team.”

Rebecca moved over to Superdynamic, who was moving in the direction of the light emitter that held his armor. He paused and took her in his arms, wiping the tears from her face.

“Please be careful,” she said. “Both of you.”

He kissed her and entered the beam of light, the armor segments slapping onto his body, encasing him save for the bottom part of his face.

I walked around the table, intent on taking the same lift as Superdynamic, but Rebecca interrupted me.

“I want you to know something,” she said, taking my face like one would a small, petulant child. She was so tall it wasn’t much of a reach for her.

“People care about you. We care about you.” She moved in and kissed me softly on the lips. “And she cares about you. More than you realize.”

Rebecca released me and reached for Jeff’s hand, holding it tight until we entered the elevator and the door began to slide closed, unspoken anguish burning like fire in her eyes.

“I know,” I said once we had been in the elevator for a few moments.

He looked at me, a bit confused at first, then smiled when he understood what I was saying; he was in charge, I was going to follow his lead, etc.

“You’re a very lucky man.”

Superdynamic nodded. “So are you.”

Part Four

Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness

Chapter Thirty-Six

From the time we arrived at Superdynamic’s Mali base to the moment we boarded the Cicada for our return flight, three hours and fifty minutes had passed. In that time, I had insulted or offended just about every member of his team, scared a young botanist half to death, and damn near gotten Focus killed.

Not too bad, considering it’s me.

In the time it had taken me to alienate everyone at the tower, Superdynamic’s people installed an additional seat and workstation for me. It was a bit cramped with the low-sloping roof at the rear of the Cicada; but it was nice to know they were thinking about me, and it was more comfortable than the rickety fold-out seat I had on the trip out. I had a fully functioning computer console and a Blackjack-sized leather chair to research Lord Mighty on the three-hour trip.

Mighty kept his life a secret, but there were theories. Hell, there were enough books, blogs, and magazines based on those theories to fill a library, and I had the flight time between Timbuktu, Mali and Washington, D.C., U.S.A. to burn. Some people believed that Mighty had been part of Dr. Retcon’s Original Seven: Lady Jayne, Valiant, Global, Apostle, Ed Watters, Nostromo, and Retcon himself, but that was the supposition least supported by evidence. Mighty’s power level was the only thing that lent it any credence. It was thought to be on par with any of the Original Seven, but that was all based on conjecture. I didn’t have a quantitative analysis of Mighty’s strength and endurance as compared to, say, Global or Nostromo, or even to Valiant, whose power set was nearest to his. It was all theory and bullshit, and half of Lord Mighty’s rep was based on his confident, even magnanimous, personality.

Others surmised a background in acting, with some claiming that Mighty had left behind a career as a stuntman and body double to Steve Reeves, the 1950s sword & sandal movie star. He was somehow exposed to one of the Seven for an extended period of time, making him most famous of the second wave of heroes and villains.

That theory took into account his classic looks and the old-school costume. The timing also matched. He’d been active for fifty years, unaffected by aging; in fact, he appeared younger and more vibrant with each passing decade.

Prior to Hashima, Lord Mighty had disappeared for a few years, but my theory on that was that there were no major villains to beat, no worldwide calamity to resolve. Most of his nemeses were dead, incarcerated, or retired, like my friend Black Razor, and there were no challenges left. Razor’s mind was a fragile place, and these days he was more of a threat to soil himself. Mighty felt it beneath him to stop bank robbers or terrorists, and he’d left the world behind.

I first met him on Hashima, and only Nostromo’s word had kept him from taking our fledgling group apart. If it took something as drastic as the return of Retcon to pull him out of seclusion, then what could have driven him to throw his lot in with Zundergrub, as a villain of all things?

After the first hour at high speed, everyone settled in, and I recognized their routine of trying to keep their minds busy and off the impending battle. Moe’s head swayed slightly to music blaring from his ear buds as he played solitaire on the console. Ruby texted away, her fingers almost a blur, no doubt updating her Facebook page and responding to her fans on Twitter. Templar read a bible, oblivious to the world, and Focus had her back turned to me, but she also looked to be praying or meditating. Closest to me was Ricochet, who fell asleep halfway across the Atlantic while watching a 1960s vintage Ultraman movie.

At the helm, Superdynamic guided us, steering the ship through dense cloud cover. He was taking us higher to avoid the turbulence in slow, sweeping maneuvers designed to ease the ship aloft without causing discomfort. Mirage was in the co-pilot’s chair, monitoring radio chatter out of D.C. I listened to the same channel for a while, but it was almost impossible to discern who was friend and who was foe.

I could tell that Americans were fighting Americans in street-to-street skirmishes, with both sides taking heavy casualties. From what I could understand, General Maxwell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had assembled a defensive perimeter around D.C. proper using several Army and Marine divisions. They set up an elaborate bunker system adjacent to Interstate 495, the “Capital Beltway” that surrounded the inner suburbs and most major government buildings, advancing into the central parts of the city early this morning and surrounding the White House.

Maxwell had unleashed his mecha into the city, and they were systematically destroying the few defending forces the President and Congress had been able to muster. The fighting was now reduced to guys with pistols against mechanized infantry and armored robots.

I brought up some footage from earlier today of a mecha roaming the streets of D.C. on my console. From time to time, the thing would stop, raise one of its arms, bristling with missiles and cannon, and take a shot. Surrounded by fire and smoke, the mecha trudged along like Godzilla trampling the city underfoot.

Opposing Maxwell and his army were a patchwork of cobbled-together forces led by General Chester Allan Hinds, a grizzled veteran commander, best known for his service in Kosovo with the United Nations mission back in the 1990s. But like most wartime situations, the cream rose to the top, through either luck or circumstance; the news said he had been vacationing with his wife in the nation’s capital when Maxwell’s forces struck. General Hinds had taken command of the opposing forces and now engineered the push into the city. The stalemate between his and Maxwell’s forces on the outer ring of the city gave the latter all the time in the world to take the White House.

That was exactly where Apogee with the new derivation of her group, the Revolution, could be found, fighting for their lives in a desperate final stand. This new version of the team boasted some powerful heroes, including the underdeveloped child-menace Jasper, the density controller Damage, the mind-controller Dominus, Snaps with his deadly disintegration powers, the walking rockpile known as Mount Fuji, and the diva called Bamma, who was Apogee’s rival for the title of sexiest super heroine. It was a complement powerful enough to hold off Maxwell and hundreds of rogue villains. I only hoped they would last long enough for us to arrive and turn the tide.

As far as what Lord Mighty was doing, no one knew. He could end the dispute in an instant, but as of yet, he hadn’t made his presence known. Maybe he was Zundergrub’s contingency plan.

“Everyone switch to channel 29,” Superdynamic said.

Moe made the change and disconnected his headset so I could hear.

It was an Al Jazeera newscast, with a lone reporter accompanied by a military advisor.

“...almost ready for broadcast. I’m told that we received this shortly, and again, the contents of which we haven’t yet ascertained. We can say that this is a recorded message from the President herself, though how recent we can’t say.”

“If I can jump in, Eric,” said the other man, a severe-looking fellow who wore a U.S. Air Force uniform, with the gold oak leaves insignia denoting his rank as Major. “One thing we do know is that the whole D.C. area is under some sort of jamming, so ... well, what we got was a video that the President managed to upload to the Internet using hard lines. Our producers have seen the video, or at least part of it, and can verify that this is a message from the President herself.”

“Yeah, I think everyone watching can understand this is a developing story. We’re literally bringing you the news as soon as it comes to us. Is it ready yet?” Eric said, speaking to someone off-screen. “Almost?”

“From what I understand, we’ve had to re-encode the whole video to a format we can broadcast, and that takes some time.”

“That’s right.”

“It should be ready momentarily.”

“And just to recap for our viewers: forces led by General Taylor Maxwell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, rolled into the capital two days ago, tanks, helicopters, armed soldiers, surrounding the city and keeping anyone from entering or leaving the inner district. From the last reports, the forces defending the capital are comprised of members of the FBI, local authorities, and a small group of Virginia Military Institute cadets who happened to be at the White House during the initial assault. Loss of life is hard to tell, but the images we’re getting from across the Potomac are disheartening, reminiscent of Sarajevo or Mogadishu, as Major Kozlanski here can attest to.”

“I can, Eric. I can, and it breaks my heart to see the capital of the country I served for thirty-two years and....” the Major paused, swallowing hard. “I just couldn’t have imagined this....” He covered his mouth and couldn’t go on.

Eric jumped in. “I think that everyone watching shares your sentiment, Major, in saying that no one could have ever envisioned–” he stopped, cuffing his ear. “We’re ready? Okay folks, here’s the unedited video as we received it.”

The screen switched to a pixelated image of the President, wearing a dark blue suit with a flag pin attached to the lapel. The only sign that she might be under duress was that the video seemed taken in a dimly lit hallway, more akin to a captive held by terrorists. Her salt-and-pepper hair was pulled back in a bun, like usual, but frayed and a bit disheveled, and odd fit considering her usually flawless appearance. When the video switched to her, she was mid-sentence, talking over the reporter.

“–to report to all of our allies abroad, and to those who might take notice, we are still holding out and we will continue to do so as long as we have strength. We are heartened by the presence of several supers here, including Red Badger, Anima, Precog, Cirrus and the supergroup the Revolution, among many others who have sought refuge in what remains of the White House. We’ve been given a momentary reprieve by the assaulting forces, which include many of the villains who escaped from Utopia prison last month. And for some reason, Lord Mighty has switched sides and now stands against us.”

She paused, looking down at some notes.

“But now is not the time to be disheartened, now is not the time to doubt your country. We are in touch with untainted forces that are even now making progress to relieve us, and hope that they are soon to break through the enemy lines. More importantly, I want to let the American people know that we will stand and fight, and in the end we will prevail. To paraphrase the words of one of our greatest presidents: ‘We here highly resolve that this nation, under God, shall not be lost to tyranny, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’ I thank you and join in all your prayers for our nation in this most perilous hour, and know that if God be just, then we cannot fail. Thank you and God bless America.”

The video cut to black and the image switched to Portland and Major Kozlanzki, whose comments Moe shut off by lowering the sound.

“Now we know what we’re facing, “ Superdynamic said from the cockpit.

If the President was still broadcasting from the White House, then I had reason to believe that Apogee was still alive and fighting. The footage was recent and clean, with the President sitting in a medium shot with the seal of the office behind her. She was letting the nation, and the world, know that they did not intend to surrender. They fought for the future of the country.

Her speech hit all the right notes to calm the populace, mobilize supporters, and allay foreign worries. Zundergrub’s primary goal in destabilizing the U.S.A. was to make them a target for military and economic aggression from China, Iran, and North Korea. Anyone holding a grudge or feeling ambitious was receiving a clear message: “Now’s the time to strike.”

Even if we were successful today and managed to beat Zundergrub and his cronies, fight off the military, and win the day, the real task would be recovering all the traction lost in the past few days, the trillions of dollars lost in the markets, and repairing bonds between nations that lay close to tatters. That was Zundergrub’s endgame, to throw the world into chaos. That would lead to the end of civilization, perhaps even the extinction of humanity. It was mankind he hated, not the planet, not its flora and fauna. That’s why he couldn’t just take over the American nuclear arsenal and unleash it on Russia or China, knowing that between the first strike and the retaliation, most of the world would be annihilated. If he did that, he might ensure the destruction of man, but the cost to his dear little fishies was more than Zundergrub could bear. Destabilization would accomplish the destruction of the world order, bring the downfall of both U.S.A. and China, the world’s worst polluters, and perhaps introduce a new paradigm wherein he could affect change easier. He was patient and organized, and this was the first part of his grand design.

The doctor’s problem was that he hated progress, he hated civilization. Zundergrub longed for a simpler time, much like his childhood in northern India. A tribal life, less burdened with the world-integrating effects of technology; something more akin to the small village in Shard World, the one time he had found bliss.

I turned to my console and brought up the video of Gen. Maxwell’s speech, turning the volume all the way down. As soon as the camera pulled back at the end, revealing Dr. Zundergrub, I paused it. There was a smile on his face, smug in the satisfaction that his plan was soon to bear fruit. In fact, word from foreign news sources was that Russia was mobilizing most of their western forces along their border and already rolling into the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Chechnya, and Ukraine. The Russians weren’t waiting to see what was happening in the U.S. before taking steps to “reacquire” their former territories. China was taking a more passive attitude, putting their armed forces on alert and going so far as to send a large fleet to patrol Taiwan and Hong Kong under the guise of “exercises,” but they were otherwise making no overtly hostile acts.